Two Poems
Barnaby Smith
Factory song
“I believe in littering, waste should not be hidden but seen.”
— Cass McCombs
trembling hammers half-animated
stands between this
& pitchforks
in tools
ungrammared un-Gandhi-ed
recall Gandhi & smell latrines
habitats partitioned in
rock phosphate i.e
gloved charity, many-headed
cherish others
as rocks &
unthought
interfaces evolving
as bodies slow down—
tongues flail,
distinguish between
animal vegetable instincts
[chorus]
imagine your colander skin
in daylight / con
temporary free
domesticated
inheritance calcified axioms
under ceiling fans
cradling
the all-possibility of a no
response in a humid place
Acre / age
begin with a talk about
wind direction?
or a cutting retort
for the excavator
tomorrow
they’re guessing at circuits –
an inventory of the future
compelling the intimacy of terrain
out from beneath lolling stones
come the chimerical fire trail
conversation sprawls into an
encompassed hum,
a relieving northerly—
strangers ad-libbing on a theme
of management provide verdicts
that ring out prospects —
then those delicate unsure seconds
before it drops: when mobile phone
is mistaken for bird call
their thoughts are all in vegetation
that changes at a certain height,
demanding heavier strut
& a clinical expression
of what’s rational — it
knows only itself, a streak of
cruelty retooled
to ward off the quiet
Barnaby Smith is a poet, journalist and musician currently living on Bundjalung land in Australia. His poetry has appeared in Cordite, Southerly, FourW, Best Australian Poems, Australian Poetry Anthology, Meniscus, Transnational Literature and others. His arts and music criticism has appeared in or at Rolling Stone, the Guardian, Australian Book Review, The Quietus and others. He won the 2018 Scarlett Award for arts criticism. Barnaby Smith is online at SeededElsewhere.com.
